Great question! Kim is referring to the noticeable dip in video fidelity that happens when you upload a video file to a social-media platform like Facebook or Twitter. Videos often look, let’s say, muddier; less clear than the same video looks when playing the file on your phone.

The reason for this is because of lossy compression. Compression is that act of taking a file, and making it smaller. In lossless compression, the file is made smaller without reducing the quality of the media (there are various ways of doing this through technical wizardry that I won’t get into here). Lossy compression is essentially a compromise — that a slight dip in file quality is worth the smaller digital footprint.

The calculation that social-media platforms make is simple: If the files they are serving up to users are smaller, they will use less bandwidth, and that will keep costs down.

Obviously, smaller files download faster. The faster a service can serve media up to a user, the longer it can keep that user hooked. Even a couple of extra seconds of load time could make a user exit and head elsewhere online. Load times really matter, and platforms have determined that people are more likely to stick around if even low-quality video is already playing.

Compression is the main reason, but there are a couple others. For instance, a slower data connection might result in lower video quality. Most video platforms calculate your data speeds and adjust video quality on the fly. As such, you’ll usually get better video quality over Wi-Fi than you would over a mobile data connection like 4G, the former is usually faster than the latter. The video saved on your phone is stored locally — there’s no need to download anything — but the video you see on social media is streaming from a remote server, and thus, getting shoved through a metaphorical funnel.

And last but not least, there’s the freebooting issue. Freebooting is when someone rips a video and reuploads it themselves, and it’s a vital (and problematic) part of how digital content travels around the web. This leads to a cycle of video, image, and audio files getting compressed not just once, but multiple times. It’s the digital equivalent of copying a VHS so many times that it’s barely watchable.

#BREAKING: I’m told the entire @BPDAlerts Emergency Response Team has resigned from the team, a total of 57 officers, as a show of support for the officers who are suspended without pay after shoving Martin Gugino, 75. They are still employed, but no longer on ERT. @news4buffalo

In case you were wondering about the unmarked federal agents dotting Washington

Few sights from the nation’s protests in recent days have seemed more dystopian than the appearance of rows of heavily armed riot police around Washington, D.C., in drab military-style uniforms with no insignia, identifying emblems or names badges. Many of the apparently federal agents have refused to identify which agency they work for. “Tell us who you are, identify yourselves!” protesters demanded, as they stared down the helmeted, sunglass-wearing mostly white men outside the White House. Eagle-eyed protesters have identified some of them as belonging to Bureau of Prisons’ riot police units from Texas, but others remain a mystery.

The images of such heavily armed, military-style men in America’s capital are disconcerting, in part, because absent identifying signs of actual authority the rows of federal officers appear all-but indistinguishable from the open-carrying, white militia members cos-playing as survivalists who have gathered in other recent protests against pandemic stay-at-home orders. Some protesters have compared the anonymous armed officers to Russia’s “Little Green Men,” the soldiers-dressed-up-as-civilians who invaded and occupied western Ukraine. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to President Donald Trump Thursday demanding that federal officers identify themselves and their agency.

To understand the police forces ringing Trump and the White House it helps to understand the dense and not-entirely-sensical thicket of agencies that make up the nation’s civilian federal law enforcement. With little public attention, notice and amid historically lax oversight, those ranks have surged since 9/11—growing by roughly 2,500 officers annually every year since 2000. To put it another way: Every year since the 2001 terrorist attacks, the federal government has added to its policing ranks a force larger than the entire Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).